


blood runs thick (it fades over time)

by jemmasimmns (laurellance)



Series: reflections (a harry potter fanfiction collection) [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Sirius Black Centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-27 16:37:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7626049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurellance/pseuds/jemmasimmns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sirius is all edges, cold and defensive, and aristocratic and proud. He is the prosecutor, the judge that no one was sure how he would react. The one whose eyes spoke of unfathomably deep memories no one knew, deep rooted veins in his eyes that spoke of memories lost and trauma. </p><p>He is as unpredictable and unstable as the blood he was bred from, taught lies that unravel and haunt him for years to come. </p><p>(Or: a character study of Sirius Black)</p>
            </blockquote>





	blood runs thick (it fades over time)

The thing is: Sirius Black is a byproduct of his upbringing, an aristocrat on all but name. A back sheep, and their greatest pride and joy. 

That's a lie. The Black Family refuses to acknowledge that Sirius exists, but they might as well just do it, because there is no denying it. He wears the grey eyes with the intensity of a thousand suns, the slightly terrible vision a result of inbreeding, and the midnight black hair, dark and smooth, always silky. He is proud, dismissive, and he is passionate. 

He is, put simply: he is the coldest of the cold, the selectively exclusive that loved with an intensity that would put the even the most dedicated to shame. He is everything all at once, all contradictory terms and pride wrapped up in one. 

Sirius is all edges, cold and defensive, and aristocratic and proud. He is the prosecutor, the judge that no one was sure how he would react. The one whose eyes spoke of unfathomably deep memories no one knew, deep rooted veins in his eyes that spoke of memories lost and trauma. 

He wears Walburga Black to Severus Snape, an avenging angel who was determined to play what was right and what was wrong, one who would ruin the entire world just to see Snape die. He plays Walburga, in the casual cruelty that scared. In the lack of morality, the apathy, in the murder attempts to the humiliations. 

He bears with him the trained arrogance and grace of the Black Family, in the always perfect posture and the way everything he does on the surface is controlled, refined to project what he had wanted to project. The only difference is that his eyes show through, the silvery grey showing the only genuine emotion that could be told. 

He is an open book, and a closed one at the same time. Cold and exclusive, but as passionate as a star- but he retains their other qualities, in how fast he falls, because falling stars are horrors upon horrors upon horrors, the bright losing their talents in their fall from grace. In how they glow out too early, lost potential for everyone to see the ruins that remain. 

He is their prodigy, their legend on the battlefield. Moving with grace and flexibility; quick witted enough to hold duels with Death Eaters at ease. He moves like a swan, and has the fluidity of water, able to adapt at every turn while using the dark arts. The spells come from him naturally, a reminder of his upbringing. The spells, the Order learns to fear very quickly. Because there is nothing to suggest that Black wouldn't try to kill them, in the rapid-fire way he dueled, in how he would hold conversations with them as they fired deadly enchantments that would ordinarily have killed the other by the third spell used. 

There is something else: he does not treat the duels as they are battles. They are perhaps training duels, a familiar dance Sirius knows like the back of his hand. Duck, Turn, Twist, Fire, Taunt. Duck, Hex, Insult, Laugh, brush off any injuries at ease. The people are female, many of them cut from the same cloth he was. Their strengths the same as his, their weaknesses similar to his. 

It's a game, he figures. Hex Lestrange (Rudolphus), mention some old joke from five years ago, and avoid ten cutting spell fired back. Sirius doesn't take it seriously, because it had been his birthright, something so deeply engraved into his bones that it is a part of him, a part of his past and present and his future. 

There is something the Order will notice in-between 1979 and 1980- that Sirius, Sirius will lose his father, his uncle, and his brother all by the years end, and he will lose himself in the progress. It is the beginning to the road to ruin, the one they say is paved by good intentions. This is true of course, but not every story has Peter Pettigrew, who only acts as a catalyst to it all. 

He loses control between those few months, wand work reckless and Sirius borderline suicidal. He laughs, coldly and cruelly in times that people would cry, eyes cold and unmoving at funerals, because mourning is a private thing for him, bred into him as early as he can remember. To never show weakness, no matter what. 

He will lose all inhibitions, the road to ruin well on his way. His skills will seep though, in the darker hexes, in the occasional Crucio. Only now there is a determination in his eye, an all seeping anger that threatens to consume whoever stood in his way. 

He is also Twenty One, and his binding falls apart. The memories that he had pushed into the deepest and darkest corners of his mind are ones that show his family as people, not the monsters he portrays them to be. They threaten to overwhelm him now, the dead he curses while he repeats the same task over and over again to express his grief. The plates that are scrubbed clean, and the bleeding red palm he has as a result of it. The red eyes, the tears wiped away at early dawn, the memories he tells bartenders drunk at asscrack dawn, in all seriousness like nothing else mattered. 

His binding commands him to be strong, commands him to be a mysterious and unstoppable force of nature. Cold, isolated and he falls apart regardless. Because he is made of rules of a dying and decrypt society that spoke of grace and elegance, and he himself breaks away from the cycle, only to find himself spiralling into a downhill descent of madness, alcohol and memories and traditions of people and things long gone. 

His end is one they had expected: killing one of his best friends, one of the only people who they saw actually attempted to take care of him more than once. Lost his mind, they whisper to their children at the dead of night, because there are holy things to be said and there are the unholy. The confessions they whisper at a time of darkness are apt, ironic even. 

What is more iconic is that the years he spends on the run are some of his best. Perhaps it's the relative lightheartedness of them, the need to keep on going because he has so much he wants to run from but can't, because it is all in his head. 

The fact that he comes back to Grimmauld is one of the greatest ironies of all time. He had left at fifteen, screaming in anger and hatred, and he comes back to find the same thing. The house remembers, and it holds grudges. Dead and living alike. 

Grimmauld in the time he spends alone is when he finds it the worst. Because the rooms he tears apart are for those who deserved it, and the ones he tells them not to go into are ones that he remembers in a relatively decent light now. The office his dad had used, his and Reg's room, are all declared cursed, dangerous, and Molly never steps foot in them. 

He sees ghosts, in the people who had once been in the rooms, and imagines they are there, and for a moment it is bliss, because it is familiar, having grown up in a world on fire. This one, with the Weasleys, and Tonks and Remus flirting, Harry, is new and something unexpected. 

It's better, but only because it's not his past. For the most part, because Snivelly still exists in it, and that is always a shame. But there's Harry, there's Remus (who he holds onto more as a memory of what he had lost than anything- because they remembered, and they were the only ones left. There is nothing romantic about this, nothing that could even be called friendly.), there's Tonks and the Weasleys, and it's somewhat better now. 

He still is trapped in Grimmauld when they're all gone, but he thinks his memories are so corroded that they don't even sting anymore. Their antique Firewhiskey however, is depleted very quickly, with bottles being drained at a very quick rate. 

His end is something else. For a second he can believe this is the first war all over again, and he has his three brothers beside him. Peter, usually the one who got hurt first, James who he stood back to back with, and Remus who usually cast shield charms more than anything. It feels like it, the line up having not changed. Malfoy leads, the pompous idiot who never really changed. The ever suffering Nott, who looked older and older, and the rest all familiar faces to his memory. 

It's familiar, in how Bellatrix surges forward to take him, and it's so much like old times, so much like old times he can almost believe he is 19, and taking the world head on. Bold, brave, and wanting to create something for himself, something that wasn't tied to his family. 

But like always, it always comes back to his family, to the same family that demanded purity be saved, consequences be damned. The blasted veil takes him, and he falls through, still managing to look graceful doing so, because he still retains ties to his past, as distant as it may be now. 

Because Sirius Black's life is one of tragedy, one that they say is doomed from the start. Doomed regardless of what route was taken, doomed because there are so many chances of things that could have been taken, but aren't because this story is riddled with lost potential and leads and apologies and everything that leads to the path that leads to hell, that leads to twelve years of Azkaban and the following few on the run or trapped in his childhood home. 

It's a long, hard life, paved by anger and remorse and unfair imprisonment. It's a life that he was destined to fall regardless of what path he took, blue blood running strong and defiant through his veins, a constant reminder of the things he would never be able to prospect forget. 

He falls through the veil and it all ends. He dies, and it's a Gryffindor's death, one that he wouldn't be able to attend a funeral for, because who attends a funeral to their own death bed? 

**Author's Note:**

> I think I made myself very sad over this. 
> 
> tumblr @ staliahs.


End file.
